Demons
by preciouseternity
Summary: AU ONESHOT - Damon kills a hunter and is forced to face his haunting hallucinations.


**This is a little oneshot/drabble I wrote for a dear friend of mine on tumblr. It's been a while since I've been on so I figured I'd post it here as well. I hope you all enjoy it!**

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Demons

_There was a loud snap, and a muffled thump as the hunter's lifeless body crumpled to the concrete floor. Damon glared down on him, rage still pulsing through his veins. The strongest rage he had ever felt. It colored his vision red, made it impossible to breathe. Plenty had threatened Elena's wellbeing, but none the way this pathetic excuse for a man had. None had brutally tortured her both physically and mentally. And none had done it right in front of him. _

_ "Damon," Elena called out his name weakly, her voice rough and pleading. He swallowed hard and turned around. She was staring at him, her large eyes wide with shock. He had promised her he wouldn't kill the hunter. But that was before she had been kidnapped. That was before the hunter poisoned her with vervain. Before he cut into her skin and forced her demons to the surface. _

_ What was Damon supposed to do? Just let her suffer? He'd rather die. _

_ "You killed a hunter," Elena whispered as Damon came toward her and ripped off the vervain soaked rope that bound her. He winced, but didn't reply. He knew exactly what killing a hunter entailed. He'd watched Elena be tortured by her hallucinations. By her guilt. And he knew he'd suffer the same. Only this time, the fix wouldn't be so easy. _

...

Damon groaned and leaned his head back against the stone wall of the tomb. What the hell was he supposed to do in here? Wait for Stefan and Elena to magically find another hunter?

Yeah. That was likely.

Damon wasn't in the game of deluding himself. There were five hunters in existence at one time. Jeremy was one. That meant there were four people in the entire world who had the power to cure him of this.

So either he was going to get pretty damn lucky, or he was going to rot here in this tomb Bonnie and Elena had just sealed him in, wishing he was dead, for the rest of his miserable life.

The latter was just slightly more probable.

"_I'll find a way, Damon. I won't give up on you,_" Elena had said just before leaving him to go search for an answer with the others. The only problem was there was only one way. And that one way had a billion to one chance of showing up on their doorstep.

It wasn't hard to guess what was going to happen from here. Elena and Stefan would search. And search. And search some more. Until they realized that finding another un-awakened hunter was impossible. Then they would stop searching. Then they would stop caring. Then they would give up. Because how can you help someone who can't be saved? You can't.

Damon was fine with it. At least, that's what he told himself. What made him deserving of being saved? Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

He ran a hand over his face and sighed. "You and me might be meeting again sooner than I expected, Ric," he said into the relative darkness.

No response. As usual. Had he been expecting any different? Had he really expected his friend to just appear in ghost form? To let him know that the other side wasn't so bad? This was even more pathetic than he had thought. . .

Damon froze as he heard something stir somewhere in the tomb. What the hell? Had someone stowed away?

"Hello?" he called, his voice tinged with annoyance. "Come out, come out wherever you are."

There was no answer, and no other noise.

Maybe he'd just been imagining things. Or hallucinating. Not that he entirely wanted to think about that. He shook his head and turned back toward where he had been sitting.

Only there was someone in the way.

It took him a moment to understand who he was staring at. She was dressed in clothing from his day – from the 1800s. Her dark, black hair fell in soft waves over her shoulders. Her bright blue eyes pierced through the darkness of the tomb. When he looked into them, recognized them as his own, he immediately knew who she was.

"Mother?" he asked, his voice rough with shock.

Damon's mother had died when he was only five years old while giving birth to Stefan. He didn't remember much, but he did remember his father never treated him the same after that day. _He _was never the same after that day.

"Damon, Damon, Damon," she clucked. "What has happened to you?" When he didn't answer, she continued. "My son," she mused. "A murderer. A liar. A cheat."

Damon winced at the sound of his own mother calling him the very things he hated most about himself.

"Does the truth hurt, Damon?" she demanded, her voice soft in all the wrong ways. She was taunting him. The woman who was supposed to love him unconditionally was _taunting_him. "I'm so disappointed," she suddenly spat. "I thought you could be better than this. I was wrong."

Damon forced himself to look away from his mother, to remember that this was merely a hallucination – a product of his own mind telling him things he already believed about himself. He'd seen it with Elena. Why wouldn't it be true with him?

He tried hard as he could to focus on something else, to make her go away. He tried so hard that he didn't even notice when she began talking again.

"-and then there's Elena. She's such a sweet girl, is she not? So innocent an naïve. Well, at least she was. Before you." At the mention of Elena, Damon returned his gaze to the eyes that were identical to his own. The eyes that held nothing but contempt. "You taught her how to hate. You taught her how to break. How to cry. How to lie. How to betray." Her voice got louder and louder with every sentence until she was gone.

Damon spun around, his eyes desperately searching for her, but finding nothing. Not until she was no more than three inches away from him.

"You're not the good guy, Damon," she hissed. "Stop pretending."

"What if I am now?" Damon spat back, tired of taking this.

"You don't _change_, Damon. You never have, you never will. So why don't you just stop. All of it. Just end this charade and let everyone live their lives in peace."

Damon jolted. _Let everyone live their lives in peace_.

In peace. Without him. Because he was the reason things were so screwed up. He was the one who came to Mystic Falls to cause trouble. He was the one who fell in love with his brother's girl. He was the one who broke said girl's brother's neck because he was angry. He was the one who lashed out whenever there was a bump in the road.

Life for the rest of them may not be perfect without him, but it sure as hell would be better.

When he looked up, she was gone again and he was completely alone in the tomb. He tried not to think about the things his mother had said to him as he slid down the wall, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.

If an eternity of this was what he was going to have to deal with, he needed something to drink.

"Hey."

It was Elena this time. His eyes snapped open, immediately focusing on her face which was inches away from his own. How had he not heard her? More importantly, how did she even get in? Bonnie had spelled the tomb from both sides. No vampire could get in. No vampire could get out. Just in case someone wanted to kill him, he supposed.

"Elena what –" he cut himself off as it dawned on him. This wasn't Elena. At least, not the current Elena. She looked so different, the fire in her dulled. He recognized it. It looked like the Elena who existed after her parents died. Before she took a step away from her survivor's guilt. Before she learned to live again.

"I wish it could have been you," she said, sitting down in front of him and pulling her knees into her chest. "But it couldn't be. Because how could I love you as a human? How could I let something as dark as _you_, taint the light that is _humanity_?"

She sounded disgusted. Like the thought of them together when she wasn't a murderer like him was the worst nightmare she could have ever thought of.

"Actually," she said thoughtfully. "How can you believe I love you now? After everything you've done to hurt me? You think I can forget that just because I'm a vampire? You're wrong, Damon."

"I've heard that one before," Damon muttered, narrowing his eyes at her. "Trust me."

"Oh? Have you heard this one?" she asked, her voice suddenly very sweet. She leaned forward and brushed her cheek against his. "I am physically unable to love a man like you."

Damon pushed her back and glared at her. For the first time in a long time he couldn't tell whether he was looking at Elena or Katherine. He supposed it didn't matter. Both thought the same of him.

"It's always going to be Stefan, Damon," she reminded him sweetly before disappearing all together.

Oh yeah. If he was going to have to deal with this for the rest of his unnatural life, they were going to have to bring the entire Mystic Grille Bar to him.

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**Maybe I should also include the fact that I wrote this entire thing between the hours of 12 and 3 am :p and it wasn't beta'd. So I profusely apologize for any glaringly obvious mistakes I may have over overlooked.**

**Please leave a thought or two! Reviews = happiness :)**


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